Origins of ‘The Great Moderation’

James Stock, a Harvard economist, coined the phrase “the great moderation” while writing a research paper with Mark Watson of Princeton earlier in this decade. You can read the paper — “Has the Business Cycle Changed and Why” — here.

Ben S. Bernanke gave the phrase a much wider audience in 2004, when he gave a speech titled “The Great Moderation.” At the time, he was a Federal Reserve governor, and Alan Greenspan was the chairman. The speech is available here.